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The Phantasy Star 25th Anniversary Thread | When Red Rings Were Good

pants

Member
I'd also like to give a shout-out to the retranslation of Phantasy Star. The translation is loads better than the original, and it also makes the FM music available in an English version for the first time.

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This is just not cricket :/ The original poop translations were part of the fun xD

Love the PS series, the only ones I havent played are the Universe games.
 
I grew up a Sega kid so I played Phantasy Star on the Master System but never beat it. I was pretty young, 11 years old I believe when Phantasy Star came out, and maxed out all attributes but I couldn't figure out what to do next to get to Lassic. Tried playing it again several years ago on my PSP with an emulator but my save got corrupted after getting Noah so I didn't have the heart to start over.

I was a huge fan of PSII, didn't really mind the grinding at all. PSIII was not great but I still enjoyed it then of course PSIV is probably the best of them all. PSII might be my favorite for nostalgia reasons.

Never played any Phantasy Star beyond IV. Still waiting on V....
 

DJIzana

Member
With the anniversary, Sega of America should release a trailer for those of us waiting for it to release in North America. That, or a nice release state / development status of the Western version would suffice. ;D
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
As I mentioned to Schala earlier, I only own PSII, and have never played it other than slapping it in my Genesis once to confirm it booted up.
That is not what Phantasy Star II is for, Shadow Hog. >:|

DJNoctis said:
With the anniversary, Sega of America should release a trailer for those of us waiting for it to release in North America. That, or a nice release state / development status of the Western version would suffice. ;D
Paging RubyEclipse.
 

MisterC20XX

Member
Ah, Phantasy Star on the Sega Master System was my first RPG and the first game I ever played marathon-style, over 35 hours straight the weekend it released in the US. It's hard to believe that was over 24 years ago--good times!
 
I played 1, 2, and 3 when they were current (so old), but I haven't been back. I keep waiting for a proper "RPG fans don't give a fuck about online" sequel, but I suppose I'll have to go without. I'll never forget the first one... it was my first RPG. The 3D dungeons were amazing / frustrating.
 

Philia

Member
Another FAN of this series chipping in! :D

I've adored this series since I saw it for rental on the genesis all those years ago. I took to III so much that I am STILL surprised to this day that there's a lot of hate for it. :(

III was my first introduction to the series and I rarely see II anywhere before I finally got around to it, and of course the first one was on a console I don't own so I wouldn't be able to play the first one til years later via emulation or Sega Collection.

Back then I played some of IV after III as a rental and adore it so much too. I wasn't able to beat the whole series til a decade ago via gba collection, emulation and sega collection finally. :D

My husband's a HUGE fan of PSO and had never touched the old school titles til I forced him to. He only has played and beaten the first one and thought it was neat at least. :D
 

drizzle

Axel Hertz
That's what he's called in the English version of Phantasy Star 4.

I know they're the proper translations. The Master System translation is pretty bad, but I grew up fighting Lassic alongside with Odin and Noah.

It's just small details, but they just sound wrong to me. Specially since I didn't actually play any of the follow ups. I'll go even deeper and tell you that FM version just sounds wrong to me... I know, I know...

Great that it was made though. The new font looks amazing. Are the HP/MP restoration items called Mates and Fluids?
 
Ace OP, brings back many fond memories. The only mainline title I never played is the original. Never had a master system growing up. PSII-IV are some of my favorite gaming memories though, yes, even III.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Ace OP, brings back many fond memories. The only mainline title I never played is the original. Never had a master system growing up. PSII-IV are some of my favorite gaming memories though, yes, even III.
If you could spring for a copy of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection or getting the game on the Wii Shop Channel, it wouldn't be too bad?

Though to unlock it in the Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection you need to fight the Emerald Hill boss in Sonic 2 with 2 players (just use a second controller).
 

Beckx

Member
Thank you for posting this thread. I've been working on a post for the "top RPGs" thread and one of the challenges for me is whether to rank PS1 or PS2 first. Still thinking about that.

Anyway, I dearly love these games. They form part of my core videogame history and experience. It's also a significance influence on my taste in genres; Sci-Fantasy has been my favorite genre ever since.

PS1 was the first JRPG I'd ever played, back in 1988 when it came out in the US. I'd known it was coming for a while. Sega was still running a regular television ad campaign for the Master System, and right around this time, the campaign featured a kid who'd brought his friends over to play games on his SMS. One of those ads ended with the kid turning to the camera and saying "wait til they see Phantasy Star." I was starved for games for the SMS, saw it in the store a little while later, along with the "4 mega memory" script on the cart, and picked it up. Two decades later I still think it was probably the most important video game purchase I ever made.

I devoured the game. Played it constantly. Delved into its secrets. It did two things that set the benchmark for what I want in game: it offered a compelling world and narrative, but also offered significant white space for me to fill in as I played. Yes, there were the moments were the game delivered story to me, delivered it in a way I'd never seen a game do before, but there were moments where I just wandered the world, in my imagination filling in the back story of what Alis and crew were doing, why they were there, and what some of the many mysteries in the game might mean. I was hooked.

So many memories, but its the endgame that stands out. Getting to Baya Malay felt like a huge achievement itself, but I was stuck! I couldn't figure out how to get to Lassic's castle. In desperation I called Sega's hint number, and got some bored 20-something jerk who clearly hadn't played the game. When I asked for help, he just read "trees, sky, forest" from a hint manual - which, of course, made little sense. He got progressively more irritated at having to repeat himself, but finally I got him to read more text, making it clear I'd missed a stairwell, which would take me to the top of Baya Malay (and the view of the sky he'd been going on about). (Why do I remember this guy 20 years later? If only we could excise specific memories from our minds.) From there, the roller coaster was off: fighting through the castle, then thinking I'd been pushed to the limit by Lassic, then - The End! I'd done it! But wait...no, Dark Falz! I think I must've failed that fight 10-20 times before finally figuring out a strategy. It was so, so satisfying.

I tried to find the magic again in other SMS games, but to no avail. Ys was fun, and I remember it fondly, but unlike PS1, which I remember beginning to end, I can recall almost nothing of Ys' story. I remember buying a game called Govellius on the hope it would be as good as PS, but alas, it wasn't even close.

When the Genesis was released, I remember that it was fairly well known that PS would be getting a sequel. In the months leading up to the game, I rushed to newstands every month to get the latest gaming mags, hoping for any information about the game. Hell, I even imported my first Japanese game, Sword of Vermillion, to play any RPG while waiting for the English translation of PSII (at least, this is how I remember the timing; I also remember having to break the sides of the MegaDrive Vermillion cartridge to make it fit in my Genesis!).

Unlike many sequels since that time, Phantasy Star II was everything I could ever want. The same presentation as PS1, but there was more of it. Huge, world shaking events - the biomonster plague, the flooding, the destruction of Palma, mixed with more personal, poignant ones: Nei's death. I recorded all of these on my VCR to watch again and again. And again there was that white space: what was Palma like? what was going on in the wilds of Dezolis? what happened in the 1000 years since Alis' time?

When the ending finally rolled around, I was breathless. To me it is, still, the perfect ending to a game. I wonder how it would get mauled today?

I've been too wordy, so I'll try to wrap this up. PSIII was enjoyable, but in many ways a disappointment. It was only after I found scenes connecting the ships to the refugees from Palma that I really accepted the game for what it was. But god, some of those endings were poor, and connecting the story to Earth made me very unhappy. PSIV was a great game, but honestly, I felt like it was missing something - like it was made with a slightly cynical viewpoint, throwing in things for the Phantasy Star fans but without the real heart that made those games click.

As for Phantasy Star Online, I bought that twice (once for my JP Dreamcast, once for my NA one), and don't regret a moment of it. So many great moments. An online experience that really hasn't been duplicated for me. Even though the story is as far from PS and PSII as it could be, it still worked for me, and that Sci-Fantasy angle looked as good as it ever had.

I didn't get to play much of the later games - no time to get into PS portable, and PSU turned me off very quickly. I'm quite interested in PSO2, but haven't dived in yet.

What I really crave is a new mainline single player Phantasy Star game, but it's too much to even hope for such thing.

Apologies for being so wordy and so rambling. I hope a bit of this made sense.

Again, thanks for making the thread.
 
If you could spring for a copy of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection or getting the game on the Wii Shop Channel, it wouldn't be too bad?

Though to unlock it in the Sonic Ultimate Genesis Collection you need to fight the Emerald Hill boss in Sonic 2 with 2 players (just use a second controller).

I always wanted to play it. I'm just worried that I wouldn't enjoy it as much now as an adult, compared to when I played the sequels in my early teens. I need to just buck up and get the Genesis Ultimate Collection.
 

clem84

Gold Member
The generations games were Japan only right?

I wonder if Sega will ever release them over here. Both games on a single 360 disk... How cool would that be?


-
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
The generations games were Japan only right?

I wonder if Sega will ever release them over here. Both games on a single 360 disk... How cool would that be?


-

The first one has a fan translation but it didn't get much coverage because the game just isn't particularly good.
 

drizzle

Axel Hertz
The first one has a fan translation but it didn't get much coverage because the game just isn't particularly good.

The first generations game got a full translation? Where is it? I've been looking for a couple years already and never found one..
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
The first generations game got a full translation? Where is it? I've been looking for a couple years already and never found one..
Link removed. Nevermind, just remembered what it linked to. But yeah, there's a patch out there for the Japanese version.

I always wanted to play it. I'm just worried that I wouldn't enjoy it as much now as an adult, compared to when I played the sequels in my early teens. I need to just buck up and get the Genesis Ultimate Collection.
Hmm... there's always a chance of that happening considering you've played the sequels already, but there's nothing wrong with taking a chance if you have the ability to do so.
 

SkyOdin

Member
Coincidentally enough, my brother and I just last week finished playing through all four original Phantasy Star games for the first time, in order. We went into them knowing pretty much nothing about the classic games, having only played a little Phantasy Star Online prior. I am really glad we finally got around to it, since they are fun games (to varying degrees).

The first three games all have their ups and downs, good points and really frustrating places. Phantasy Star 1 is a fun game with a lot of great open-ended content, but suffers from the limitations of its era. Somehow, we beat the game without ever finding an entire town (which happened to have a semi-important item in it). Phantasy Star 2 had an amazing atmosphere and interesting characters, but its short story was padded out by pointless and tedious fetch-quests. Also, its dungeons are almost a crime against humanity they are so brutal. I actually think Phantasy Star 3 gets a bad wrap. It has a lot of ugly edges, but it isn't exactly alone in the series in that regard. It's generation system allows some interesting story branching, and it has some game mechanics that had some real potential.

However, Phantasy Star 4 really does hold up well alongside the best of the 16-bit generation. It was worth playing through the first three games just for the sole reason of catching the references to them made in Phantasy Star 4. The ultimate plot and final boss are pretty weak, but the journey to get there is worth it. It just added so much in terms of story-telling and gameplay mechanics. It even fixed the camera issues that plagued Phantasy Star 2 and 3.

In a lot of ways, the Phantasy Star games really stand out as predecessors to the anime-art inspired, cutscene-heavy, character-focused RPGs that really took off a bit later. Games along the lines of the Game Arts titles (Lunar and Grandia), as well as the Tales of franchise seem like they owe a lot to the Phantasy Star games.
 

Sanctuary

Member
Phantasy Star 2 gives me almost the most nostalgia of practically any console RPG from that era. The only games that beat it for that would be FF4 and FF6 (but barely). I even purchased the Master System converter to play the first game after finishing the second a few times, and that game too blew me away. That was also one of the few games that I bothered to map out all of the dungeons on graph paper.

Always kind of bugged me that I couldn't save Nei, even though I had stolen plenty of Moon Dews. It also bugged me that they stopped making the main series and turned it into multiplayer stuff.
 

IrishNinja

Member
With the anniversary, Sega of America should release a trailer for those of us waiting for it to release in North America. That, or a nice release state / development status of the Western version would suffice. ;D

oh man that'd be so awesome, just acknowledging the anniversary'd be something. id love to see some sega ages DD releases too!

Paging RubyEclipse.

haha i think i've hit up his twitter about Yakuza 1/2 HD (and 5) too much to expect a response now!


i wanna say i can guess which one, but your link isn't what you intended

That's what he's called in the English version of Phantasy Star 4.

...totally forgot about that, wow
 
Lots of memories here.

I never owned an actual Sega console until the last few years (had a Game Gear when it came out though), and I yearned for games like Phantasy Star and Sonic. I first saw the original Phantasy Star at the home of my parent's friends, who had access to every single piece of entertainment technology, no matter the expense. I was captivated, and played for as long as I could, probably only ever fighting a few battles.

Those memories stuck with me, and I was overjoyed when Phantasy Star Collection was released for the GBA. Even years after release, Phantasy Star was a revelation, and I meticulously mapped every dungeon on graph paper. Phantasy Star II was similarly a game way ahead of its time, and still immensely enjoyable, if not for the ridiculous encounter rate and dungeon design.

So, even without the nostalgia of actually owning these games when released, I can honestly say they continued to be playable in 2002, and even today.
 
So I have been playing the series for the first time over the past year and a half, since I didn't have a SMS or Genesis growing up. I did skip PSIII after beating the first generation because it felt like a step back from PSII and I couldn't be bothered to play through all the branches.

At the moment I'm about done with PSIV (last dungeon) and I'm not looking forward to it. It has been a great ride. PSII really holds a special place for me. It is true that PSIV is the better game, but there is something about PSII that has left a stronger lasting impression. I really did love the narrative even though it would have been hard at the time to flesh anything out. Starting it up for the first time and hearing that somber music during the first cut scene, awesome.

As for the online series, always wanted to play them during their heyday, but could not get my brother's Gamecube online working at the time, so we wound up returning it. A shame, because that Title Screen music sold it for me!
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Since when is the PS4 translation the "canon" one? They changed the names of everyone. Not saying PS1's translation was accurate or good, I mean it's an 8-bit RPG after all, but PS4 is not exactly a bastion of accuracy. ;) Personally I prefer Lassic over Lashiec. "Lashiec" sounds... awkward.
 
Omg this is the best thread ever, happy b'day Phantasy Star!!!

NY-Crying.gif


Phantasy Star IV remains my favourite of any Phantasy Star game. Such a mind blowing game when I was a kid, and still entertains today.

Really tempted to do a playthrough of the entire mainline series, but I have so many assignments due shortly ;_;

Phantasy Star II art was amaze, I miss it

phantasystarII.jpg


526675_2184_back.jpg
 
I only played 3 and 4. I thought 3 had fun replay value to get the different 3rd generation characters. But by far end of the millennium was a superb game. Just fantasic.
 

Aeana

Member
Since when is the PS4 translation the "canon" one? They changed the names of everyone. Not saying PS1's translation was accurate or good, I mean it's an 8-bit RPG after all, but PS4 is not exactly a bastion of accuracy. ;) Personally I prefer Lassic over Lashiec. "Lashiec" sounds... awkward.

It's about consistency at that point. Lassic isn't accurate to the original Japanese, though, which was ラシーク. There's an "ee"/long "E" sound there that isn't represented in Lassic.
 
Great OP, is this gonna function as the community thread for Phantasy Star?

I still want to play the remake of the first Phantasy Star... :(
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Superior version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss-bPYeoxnU

/waits for djtiesto to come in and champion the PSG version like a weirdo.
...someone champions the PSG version?

@_________@

Oh I forgot to congratulate Dark Schala on the fabulous OP! Great stuff :)
I worked harder on it because you guys kind of outed that I was planning it out in SonicGAF. :p

Great OP, is this gonna function as the community thread for Phantasy Star?
Only if people want it to be.
 
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